


Hold On (To Your Heart)

by arlathahn



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Eddie hates germs but he loves one Richie Tozier more, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Referenced Parental Neglect/Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 15:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16307810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arlathahn/pseuds/arlathahn
Summary: Eddie doesn’t know how to sayyou matter to me in all the ways that count. He doesn’t know how to saythis feeling is different than anything else. He doesn’t know how to sayour parents are both shitheads, but this is better than that. Better than them. He doesn’t know how to sayit’s you and me against the world. Always has been.So instead he just whispers, “This is real.”





	Hold On (To Your Heart)

**Author's Note:**

> For the anon on Tumblr who asked me to write for the Loser's Club an embarrassingly long time ago, this one's for you. I hope it satisfies the appetite. 
> 
> Title is from the song Head On courtesy of _Man Man_. Yes, that is the actual band name.

 

 

* * *

 

It starts with a moment.

They’re sixteen, hanging off the tail end of Richie’s pickup and fighting over medical supplies. The scene is nothing new, of course, but something about the pool of blood dripping from Richie’s right hand feels potent and dangerous in a way the script never is. Richie should be making jokes or plotting mayhem, but instead he’s stewing and pouting while Eddie tends to his wounds. Instead he’s silent and still when Eddie touches his cheek with an antibacterial cotton ball.

The wind is warm where it whips at Eddie’s neck, the sun is hazy where it sets off an explosion of purple and pink across the sky. The stage is set for something beautiful and grandiose, Eddie thinks, except for one Richie Tozier who is not acting on cue.

“What pieces of shit,” Richie is saying, sucking on his bloodied knuckles. “What a bunch of useless, ignorant _asswipes_.”

Richie gets like this sometimes. There are moments, few and exceptionally far between, when the anger outweighs the jokes. When Richie's near-impenetrable crowd-pleasing face falls in on itself. Eddie can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Richie this open and angry, this shockingly vulnerable. Not despite the anger, but because of it.

Eddie would shut down that anger, normally. He would tell Richie that tried and true line, he would say “beep beep” and that would be that.

Eddie doesn't say that today.

“I'm sorry,” he mutters instead.

Because the thing is, Eddie gets it.

Even stopping a demonic clown in the sewers doesn’t stop all manner of bullies. There are a few brave souls who race to take Henry Bowers’ vacant place, who shoulder and budge their way into a club they don’t belong. The violence may not be as extreme as it once was, but it doesn’t change the pain. It’s mostly stupid, petty shit, but the fact remains: the darkness is still present, sometimes, if one takes a wrong corner or provokes it into the light.

Like Richie’s occasional self-destructive streak.

“I need a cigarette,” Richie mutters, squirming away.

“Rich—”

“I don’t wanna hear it, Eds.” Richie scoots further up the truck bed, reaches for an empty pop bottle. He chucks it toward his house, the glass shattering before it ever reaches the faded blue paint called home.

“And fuck them, too.”

Eddie ignores that, for now.

“Can I at least finish fixing your face, asshole?” There are a couple scratches marring Richie’s nose that don’t look pretty. It makes Eddie’s face scrunch just looking at it.

Richie is preparing one of his longer speeches in retaliation, Eddie can tell. It’s all in the exhale before he ever speaks the first vowel, something about his hands moving even more erratically than normal. Something about his throat working as he prepares one of his god-awful voices. Something about his eyes brimming with molten fire, threatening to overflow.

It’s how Richie deals with attention, maybe, how he copes with anything remotely resembling actual, real care. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that he’s offering the bare minimum of medical treatment all the while Richie’s parents are a baseball throw away, sitting indoors pretending their son doesn’t even exist.

It makes something in Eddie feel sad, maybe. It makes his fingers tender when they place the band-aid on Richie’s nose. It makes him stock still after, makes him study Richie longer than normal.

It makes him do something really fucking stupid.

He kisses Richie Tozier on the nose. Like a fucking moron.

Eddie doesn’t even close his eyes. He just leans forward and presses his lips to the band-aid on Richie’s nose, close to Richie’s lips but not quite close enough.

And Richie just fucking—freezes.

Whatever trance he was in before appears to be broken, if his fast blinks and furrowed brows are any indication. He looks at Eddie, who looks right back at Richie, then at the dried blood still drying around his cheeks.

Eddie can’t believe he just did that.

It’s—disgusting, and eighteen different kinds of wrong. He almost kissed blood off Richie’s mouth, which is most certainly one of the seven deadly sins, Eddie is sure. He almost put that in his _mouth_ , he almost mixed saliva with the most dangerous body fluid there is.

He almost—he almost kissed Richie.

Richie sways forward a degree, Eddie swears he moves forward, and just like that all of Eddie’s careful reservations dart out the window in a flash, replaced by another, different kind of instinct that has him leaning forward, too.

They’re inches apart but it’s becoming centimeters, Eddie thinks, bit by bit, little by little. Eddie can feel every one of Richie’s breaths ghosting along his lips, he can see Richie’s mouth looming closer and closer, pausing at the last stretch before the finish line.

“Hey guys, we’re going to head home,” Ben calls out, rounding the corner.

Richie backs away. Eddie ducks his head.

“Okay.” Eddie waves, hoping to all the ethereal planes above that his reddened cheeks are non-apparent in the dusk light. Ben takes the hint and walks away without a word, so Eddie considers it a success.

There’s a moment of perfect stillness that follows, a moment crickets should appear to chirp in the wake of awkward silence. It’s the longest Richie has gone without talking, _ever_ , and Eddie has a moment to ponder whether it's because Eddie made a horrible, awful mistake before realizing how incredibly stupid the train of thought is. The mere thought that Richie Tozier, of all people, would _not_ tell Eddie when he overstepped a line is a non-issue if there ever was one.

Hell, Richie would be downright thrilled to cross a so-called arbitrary boundary with Eddie. It’s just who Richie is. It’s what he does.

But then, the Richie in front of him is not the Richie he knows. This Richie stares down at his shoes, this Richie runs a hand through his dark curly hair and shakes his head. This Richie walks away without saying a word—a _word_ —without glancing back once to whoop or holler, without celebrating or mocking or even speaking.

This Richie just—walks away.

Eddie stands there, frozen and short of breath and more than a little confused.

What the _hell_  just happened to him?

To them?

 

* * *

 

Here's the thing.

Eddie knows a lot of things.

Ask him anything. He can tell you how many bacteria live on the average park bench. He can tell you why you shouldn't eat food that's dropped on the floor—in detail. He can name lethal diseases in alphabetical order, he can spell most of them without a second thought.

He can tell you how many germs are in a single kiss.

He’s good at compartmentalizing things. He can name any number of statistics off the top of his head, at the drop of a hat. He's got a good memory, and it's _important_ to remember these things. Even if he doesn't take half the pills he used to, it doesn't mean he's stopped believing in germs outright. He still likes being clean and orderly. He’s Eddie Kaspbrak. It’s just who he is. It’s what he does.

Richie Tozier, on the other hand, makes a mess of things like that. Richie takes your lists and musses them about for no other reason than he can, and he's good at it. He knocks you off balance, he dances in the face of normalcy and tells it exactly where the sun doesn’t shine. And he has the smarts to do it, too; he uses rhetoric with lethal efficiency because he knows words like Eddie knows facts: succinct, useful and to the point.

Eddie can tell you the probability of any number of things, but one thing he can't tell you—what he never, ever thought to contemplate—are the odds of Richie Tozier walking away.

Not because Eddie thinks he's got game, or because he's hot shit or anything like that. Eddie doesn't assume he's anything even resembling somebody Richie might want. It's not that Eddie is full of himself, it's not that he thinks that Richie, for all his posturing, would hook up with anything that moves.

It's that, until this moment, Eddie didn't think Richie would walk away.

It's that, until now, Eddie really, truly thought he might stay.

 

* * *

 

Here's the thing.

For as long as Eddie can remember, he's hated Richie Tozier.

It's not the dictionary definition of hate, but more an instinctual, festering dislike for everything Richie is and everything he stands for. If Eddie is a walking medical journal, then Richie is a walking infection, a parasite just waiting to leech onto Eddie's good manners and excellent hygiene and taint it into something ugly and messy, something disgusting and unhealthy and just plain _wrong_.

It makes Richie an enemy. It makes him terrifying and gross, it makes him dirty and downright sinful. Richie Tozier is everything Eddie Kaspbrak is terrified to touch or feel or taste, everything his mother has warned about, everything Eddie was born to fight.

How they ever became best friends is a mystery.

But that's just it, isn't it? Despite Eddie's good intentions, despite his mother whispering in his ear, despite all Eddie’s careful inhibitions…it still happened. It still appeared, it still called to Eddie—and Eddie answered right back.

It's the kind of magic Richie uses on a daily basis, Eddie thinks. It's the kind of persuasiveness that is a natural byproduct of Richie’s words and tones. His fictitious voices might be worse than shit, but it doesn't mean Richie isn't _effective_ either; he may talk too much, but he also talks just enough. Enough to talk you into something that seemed inconceivable, enough to distract you from the monsters that plague at home or in sewers. Most of the time, Eddie listens just enough to shut Richie up. In rarer cases, he listens to appease Richie.

In the most desperate situations, it turns out, Eddie listens to respond in a way that’s brand new.

And Richie, he just keeps pushing the envelope. Because he can, because he's good at it. Because Eddie ups the ante himself, from time to time, and nothing is as satisfying as the gleam in Richie's eye when Eddie cracks a rare joke, or surprises everyone with a choice more daring than safe. And it's those moments, few and exceptionally far between, that Richie is always right there beside Eddie, ready to break boundaries and push the brink of diplomacy with a devil-may-care smile and a dimple in his right cheek. Richie is always so ready, so _eager,_ always equipped with a bold charisma Eddie would find admirable if it weren't so ass-backwards. Or wrong.

But the thing is, Richie isn't always. Wrong.

His forthright manner could use some work, yes. His overall diction and courtesy could use a makeover or three, certainly. But beneath the hyperactive facade, Eddie now sees what he couldn't back then: sees a boy who wasn’t always wrong when he questioned the adults, when he pushed past the brink of their complacent knowledge. It makes people uncomfortable, it makes their hackles rise and their defenses thrive, but maybe Eddie was focusing on the wrong person in the battle of wills. Maybe he should have been paying more attention to Richie, to a boy so brash in his quest for truth it made him near unstoppable. Undefeatable. Maybe Eddie should have noticed Richie's passion to find the _reason_ behind the precedent, the reason for the status quo.

He's the reason Eddie stopped taking half of those dumb medications, just like he's the reason Eddie broke his arm. Or maybe that was Bill—it all gets lost in the shuffle after a while. Either way, Richie stumbles his way through life with little to no forethought or grace but he's also—kind of captivating, too.

He's also worth it, despite the pitfalls and pains along the way.

It's what makes Eddie look twice, maybe. It's what makes him question what he really saw in Richie all those years ago, certainly. It makes him think about the very real prospect of _kissing_ Richie Tozier—again—and maybe that should be a more frightening prospect than it was just last week.

But that’s the thing about Richie. He isn’t just someone Eddie wants to kiss. He isn’t just someone Eddie cares about.

He’s a person who makes Eddie embark on his own quest for answers.

 

* * *

 

In the end, Eddie takes a page out of the Bible-thumper book, and asks himself a very simple question: what would Richie Tozier do?

The answer is pretty simple. He'd call Eddie out on his bullshit.

The only problem, then, is that Eddie is not Richie. Eddie has significantly more tact.

Maybe, in this case, that's a good thing.

In the end, Eddie drives over to Richie’s house and knocks on the front door before he has a chance to chicken out. Mrs. Tozier answers with a dull look in her eye and a bottle in her palm, prying the door open and welcoming Eddie inside with little more than an eyeroll and a shrug of one broad shoulder. She calls for Richie in an offhand fashion one might use on a stray dog before disappearing into the adjacent room.

Eddie doesn’t follow.

He can see, from his vantage point just inside Richie’s front door, a table set for two in the dining room, can see a living room littered with blankets and pillows on the sofa. He can see litter lining the floors in clumps and masses, almost organized in their effort to be swept to the side.

He can see Richie’s face at the base of the stairs, smiling with delight.

“Well hey there, Eddie Spaghetti.”

The sight in front of Eddie isn’t exactly new. Except that it, somehow, is.

Eddie swallows around the ball of nerves stuck in his throat. “Hey.”

“Aw, what’s the matter, Eds?” Richie wraps an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, chauffeurs him up the stairs in a grandiose fashion befitting his faux British accent. “Come all this way to tell me how much you missed me?”

It’s a joke, of course. Except how it maybe, kind of, isn’t.

Eddie coughs. “Just uh—wondered if you were heading to Bill’s later.”

How fucking pathetic.

Richie doesn’t have a bedroom door, just stairs leading to the second floor of his house. He ushers Eddie to his lair with a firm hand on Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie wonders, with newfound perception, if it’s less a friendly steering and more a physical barrier between Eddie and the other parts of his house.

He wonders if Richie still has nightmares, too.

“A personal invitation, huh? Cute.” Richie punctuates the final word with a sharp finale, the way he sometimes does when he describes Eddie with any variation of the word. “Cute!” he’d say, with that lilt in his voice, before repeating it in a staccato rhythm: “Cute, cute, cute!”

It used to be annoying, once. Now the lapse of the following three repeats feels—weighty, somehow.

“What’s on the agenda, anyway?” Richie asks, picking clothes off the floor. It’s messy in a way manic Richie always is, but it’s different than the garbage lining the floor downstairs. Eddie wouldn’t have caught the difference before, but something about kissing Richie on the fucking nose is making Eddie reevaluate things, all of them involving the boy in front of him with wild dark hair and deep brown eyes.

Eddie is so busy watching Richie’s long limbs touch the ground he almost misses the question entirely. “Uh, movie. I think.”

Richie stands up, adjusts his glasses. “Cool.”

The band-aid is still on his nose.

Eddie looks down at his shoes, tries not to think about the statistics he’s heard about organisms living in dirty laundry. Tries not to think about the bright yellow band-aid on Richie’s nose, tries not to think about whether there’s a deeper meaning to the fact that Richie hasn’t ripped it off. “So, um—”

Richie interrupts. “How’s your mom?”

Eddie doesn’t glower, but it’s a near thing. “Really?”

Richie shrugs. “Haven’t seen her in a while, just wondered if she—”

“For the love of god, shut _up_ , Richie.”

And for the first time in the history of Derry, Richie listens. No beep-beeps, no being told twice. Like he was expecting it, maybe, or knew he was out of line. Which—would be new.

Or would it?

Eddie thinks about his encounter here so far, thinks about everything that’s been said and everything that hasn’t. He thinks about not seeing Richie since last night, since the _almost_ , thinks about the fact that he came here with no plan and no expectation and Richie has kept up the same appearance he always has. It makes Eddie wonder, in a way he never has before, if there’s more to Richie’s classic façade than he lets on. If there’s not something Richie tries to cover up with his voices and his acting, something more meaningful than mere burning off excess energy. Maybe even something bad—something subconscious and _wrong_.

Eddie thinks about Richie’s mother, about the table, about the litter and the door, about the way Richie led him up the stairs. He thinks about how Richie didn’t make a dick joke right up to the _moment_ Eddie mustered the courage to mention something about the other night.

About the almost.

Just like that, Eddie realizes.

He realizes a lot of things.

Maybe Richie’s loudness is more than just a personality quirk. Maybe Richie’s ridiculous notions and even more ridiculous antics are more than just Richie being Richie. Maybe all this time Richie was diverting attention from a situation that was far, far worse. One just as obvious as the house on Neibolt street, but somehow just as shrouded in mystery. Just as ignored, just as frightening.

And maybe—maybe kissing Eddie wasn’t the problem. Maybe the problem had to do with the location, maybe the problem had to do with the thing Richie was complaining about five minutes _before_ Eddie decided to throw all logic out the window. Maybe Eddie was so stuck on breaking down Richie’s anger before it exploded that he missed the initial problem staring him in the face before there were bullies or band-aids at all.

Maybe Richie’s parents did a number on him before Eddie ever did.

Also, maybe they need to have this conversation somewhere else. Somewhere that is not remotely near Richie's empty house, near Richie's half-drunk, fully unobservant parents.

“Could we talk?” Richie stares at him. Opens his mouth to speak, but Eddie cuts him off. “Later?”

He really hopes the _not here_ part of that sentence is apparent.

Eddie wouldn't have pegged Richie as one to pick up on subtext, but Richie nods like he gets it. “Yeah,” he says in a voice so quiet, so not Richie Tozier it'd be worrisome if the context didn't spell deeper, darker secrets in their future.

Richie doesn't look thrilled at the turn the conversation has taken, but he's not making jokes and he's not running away, either.

Eddie counts it as the victory it is.

“Great. I'll uh—I’ll see you then.” Eddie tries to meet Richie’s eye and smile, though his eye makes it just about to the stupid fucking band-aid on Richie’s nose before his courage falls short. Eddie can feel his smile morph into something closer resembling a grimace, but he just can’t muster the brainpower to override the nerves making his hands shake and his body shiver. It’s like Eddie just uncovered a whole new disease, one that’s been right in front of his face the whole fucking time but he was just too blind to see it. He can feel the realization hitting him at the same time his courage runs painfully, woefully short, flopping like a dead fish in Richie’s general direction. Eddie can see it lying there like it’s a real, tangible thing, and he can list off the side effects overriding his instinct like it’s a prescription bottle right in front of his face:

_Side effects may include: inability to speak, nervousness, upset stomach, anxiety, and generalized fear. See also the condition known as: liking someone._

Eddie sighs.

This may be more difficult than he originally perceived, and not because of Richie as he might have initially assumed. But because he’s Eddie Kaspbrak, he knows he’s not going to let it go, and he’s not going to just move on. It’s not what Eddie does. It’s not who he is.

Once he's outside Eddie glances back at the blue house Richie calls home, the structure so familiar Eddie could draw its outline from memory alone. Looking at it now, though, the two-story house feels brand new in a terrifying, nerve-wracking way. Maybe Eddie's illnesses blinded him more than he believed, maybe he was too afraid of the simplicity of standing on the front step that he never stopped to consider what terrors lay inside.

Maybe that's the real Richie Tozier effect: maybe he helps you face your fears.

Whether or not you think you're ready.

 

* * *

 

The thing is, Eddie has been compiling a list of firsts.

Since discovering what the word placebo actually means, since discovering words like Munchausen and discerning which illnesses were real and which were paranoia, Eddie has a new sort of a drive to discover that which was—off limits, before.

A sort of teenaged rebellion, as it were.

He's still Eddie, though. He still researches and fact checks. He still buries himself in knowledge and forces himself to be brave. Sometimes it's easy to let loose a little. Other times, it's damn near impossible.

Dealing with his feelings for Richie Tozier falls somewhere in between.

 

* * *

 

Eddie means to talk things through, he really, really does.

It's just that, the next time they're alone there's a movie and there's popcorn. There's friends falling asleep and there's cuddling and there's dim lighting. It's just that there's a moment when Eddie turns and Richie swivels and physical space becomes a thing of the past when their bodies are snug lines of _connected_ in the too-small love seat. It's just that Richie's face is right there, somehow, in the middle of this mid-movie rearrangement of limbs.

Eddie means to move back, he really, really does.

Except his body doesn't listen and he moves forward instead, pressing his lips to Richie's in a full-mouthed kiss. Richie doesn't retreat but he doesn't altogether reciprocate either, sitting stock still as Eddie kisses him sweetly, as sweetly as he can.

It's only after a second, more chaste kiss to Richie's full lips that Richie seems to get ahold of himself, darting forward in one smooth motion to press his lips against Eddie's in the smallest, barest of return kisses.

Eddie almost explodes.

He doesn't mean to come back for more, doesn't mean to add the barest sliver of tongue to the equation but he does it anyway because he's a weak, weak man and Richie is his kryptonite. Because of all that he wanted to tell Richie how much he means, it doesn't seem so complicated to show him instead, especially now that he has Richie here, right here, kissing Eddie back.

Eddie hooks an arm behind Richie's shoulders, tugs him closer by his stupid striped baseball tee. He's trying to be gentle, he really, really is but kissing is intoxicating, Eddie finds, and once he starts it's hard to stop. Richie is still a firm, tense line but he's bending, Eddie thinks, he’s conforming to the shape of Eddie's hands and Eddie's mouth, to Eddie's lips and tongue and taste. He's melting into Eddie and Eddie can't get enough.

It becomes heated in a way that is neither coordinated or planned but Eddie likes the incoordination of it all. In an odd fit of cross-personalities, Eddie finds comfort in the freedom of this distinct kind of mess, and Richie finds comfort, Eddie thinks, in Eddie taking the reins and steering him in his new, unfamiliar ground. Eddie steers with precision and care—or maybe it's just raw passion that takes the wheel but either way he gives Richie his all, and his all is teemed with unbridled affection for one Richie Tozier.

“Richie—” Eddie breathes, surprised at how high-pitched his voice sounds. Richie is too, if his sudden jolt is any indication, and just like that Richie out of his trance, if it was ever a trance at all. Richie's harsh inhale is like a hiss in the dark; he moves back as though he can't reverse fast enough, hands planted on either side of Eddie's elbows, a vice.

Their heavy breathing permeates the blue-white glow from the TV. Eddie stares at Richie in shock, and Richie stares at a fixed point just beneath Eddie's collarbone. Richie's lips are a swollen, beautiful mess, and his hair is sticking up in even more places than normal. His glasses are lopsided, sliding down in fits and starts as they stick to his flushed red skin on the way down his nose.

“What?” Eddie means to put some semblance of normalcy back in his tone, but even his natural voice betrays him, falling somewhere between breathless and needy. Go fucking figure.

Richie is still a touch short of breath, staring at a single stripe on Eddie's shirt. “I—”

Eddie stares, moves a little closer.

Richie's eyes snap up. “I—need to go.”

 

* * *

 

Here’s the thing.

Eddie can name any number of diseases.

It’s what _this_ should feel like, he guesses. A disease, an infection, a taint. It should feel wrong and sinful and dirty. It should be just like the park bench, just like food that’s dropped on the floor. It’s just like the diseases, the needles, the shots, the pills.

Except that it’s not.

It’s not like Eddie thinks he can tell his mother, or flaunt it in front of the bullies. It’s not like he can tell Bill or Stan, Mike or Ben. If Richie can’t even say it, Eddie isn’t sure what hope there is for him to actually put a name to this _thing_ between them.

But in the harsh, bright light of the TV screen, it’s also not so difficult a thing to admit.

Eddie likes Richie.

Maybe the ease in which Eddie accepts this newfound reality is because there _is_ a name. It’s not an unknown, it’s not undocumented and unresearched. It doesn’t feel itchy or gross or wrong. There’s a lot he doesn’t _know_ of course, but that’s true for girls, too, and besides, liking Richie is decidedly less scary than liking some random nobody waltzing down the street.

It’s because Eddie can quantify Richie, maybe. Because he can tell exactly what Richie’s eaten for lunch, or how many germs are stuck in his mouth. The facts don’t change because of who the person is, exactly, except that they somehow do; like the mere concept of germs with strict rules meeting a lawless Richie Tozier makes the rules more—bendable. They’re no longer just tasteless, boring facts because they belong to a person.

They belong to Richie.

It’s because he knows Richie, maybe. Because he likes him. Because despite the short fuses and the even shorter tempers, at the end of the day Richie is someone Eddie cares for. Someone he trusts.

Even with his sicknesses. Even with his pills. Even with his life.

Even with…this.

Richie’s long legs are halfway across the room before Eddie’s brain can catch up. When it does, Eddie chases Richie without a single thought as to what words might make him stay. For the first time in his life Eddie Kaspbrak does not have a plan. And he doesn’t have a single rule or phobia running through his head, either. He has nothing but want, nothing but this irrational, insane need.

He catches Richie just as he bolts through the door. The front screen slams with an awful sound, reverberating in the night like a scream. They’re always caged in a house, it seems. They’re always sheltered in some room or other, ready to run.

Eddie grabs Richie’s hand. Pulls, hard and firm. Begs with his eyes and his voice for Richie to turn around. _Just turn around._

“What’s the matter?” Eddie’s voice is soft, foreign. Almost unrecognizable from his usual screeching and yelling. He’s so used to being hard with Richie, so used to reining him in, buffering his loud, eccentric tendencies. So used to fighting and resisting for no other reason than maintaining the status quo. Except nothing is normal now, nothing has been normal for three straight years and neither is this. Neither is the tremor in Eddie’s voice, the whisper of a promise on his lips. _Let me love you_ , Eddie thinks, damn the rules and damn the clichés.

He’s flushed and heady from the feel of Richie’s lips on his, he’s warm and cold at the exact same time thanks to Richie’s fading heat and the cool evening air buzzing in his ear. He’s dizzy with lust and fuzzy with confusion.

It makes him an idiot, maybe. Or maybe it makes him brave.

Eddie can feel the hand in his palm hesitate, lurching forward once before acquiescing. When Richie turns half his face is in shadow, just like his heart.

“Nothing,” Richie says, barely a whisper.

“Bullshit.”

Richie looks up at that. His brown eyes betray his confusion, then disbelief. It’s like they’ve traded places for the entire goddamn evening, except the reality is not as riveting as the concept.

“You used to question me all the time about which diseases were real.” Eddie takes a tentative step forward, cradles Richie’s palm carefully, like spun glass. “I knew you thought they were fucking stupid, even if you never said it out loud.”

“Eddie—”

Eddie shrugs, keeps on talking. “You were right, of course. The answer was staring me in the face the whole fucking time and I was too blind to see it.”

Eddie feels, more than sees, Richie’s small sigh. “It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe. But that’s not the point.”

Richie looks like the question pains him before he ever asks. “And what is?”

Eddie looks Richie in the eye. Makes sure not to cave to fear like he has a thousand times before. Richie’s taken enough hits for him, and this time it’s Eddie’s turn. This time, fear isn’t a nameless faceless monster from the other side. This time fear is a boy with large buck teeth and ugly framed glasses, a boy with curly untamed hair and long gangly limbs. A boy who’s just as broken, just as blind. A boy Eddie maybe, sort of, adores.

“I wasn’t just blind to my own diseases. I was blind to something else, too.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to say _you matter to me in all the ways that count_. He doesn’t know how to say _this feeling is different than anything else_. He doesn’t know how to say _our parents are both shitheads, but this is better than that. Better than them._ He doesn’t know how to say _it’s you and me against the world. Always has been_.

So instead he just whispers, “This is real.”

There's a moment when neither of them do anything but inhale each other's air. Eddie can all but feel tension radiating off Richie like it’s a real, physical thing, but instead of dialing it back and smothering the fire like he always does, Eddie fans the flames. This close the sheer proximity could prove fatal, but Eddie hasn't felt this alive since that day in the sewers, staring into the unknown and facing his fears. It’s almost like beating the monster all over again: the adrenaline, the fear, Richie’s hand in Eddie’s as he leads him through uncharted waters. There's an energy in the air, a tantalizing whisper of _almost_ just beyond Eddie's reach and it’s hovering between their bodies, baiting someone to make the first move.

To run, or to fall.

After all the fucking chaos that summer, after all the fucking disappointing summers that followed, there's no question where Eddie wants to be. There's no question who he wants to be with.

Richie puts his hands back on Eddie's elbows—a hilarious ass-backwards parallel of their position earlier—and pushes Eddie back one step, two steps, three, until Eddie’s back hits the firm, white siding of Bill's house.

And Richie kisses him.

It's nothing like the too-sweet peck on Richie's nose, and it's nothing like Bill's living room, either. This time Eddie can say with confidence he is _being_ kissed by Richie Tozier, and that is a far cry from the other way around.

It's not a particularly sweet kiss, and it's not particularly gentle either, but then, Eddie wouldn't expect anything less. He wouldn't expect anything but raw passion from Richie because the thing is, Richie Tozier gives just as good as he gets. If Richie gets shoved he's going to shove right back because that's what Richie _does_. Poke a fire and you get burned, but the best thing, the most surprising, new thing is Eddie _wants_ that. He wants every piece of Richie Tozier he gets to keep. Richie has always been part transparent and part enigma, and Eddie never stopped to consider which half was which: which part belonged to the secret jests between them, to the mom jokes and the cheek pinches and which part belonged to the new, tentative Richie in front of him, the Richie who is both hard and soft at the exact same time.

Richie has always been a force of kinetic energy just looking for a place to land. And now that it's here in front of him, unguarded and impressionable, Eddie finds he wants to capture that energy for a little while. He wants to tame it, he wants to touch and feel and taste it.

“Eds—” Richie whispers, lips hovering near Eddie’s ear. Eddie thinks how much bacteria the human mouth holds, then thinks how he wants this same feeling everywhere, all over, fuck the statistics. “I’m not—”

Eddie stands on his tiptoes, presses closer to the long, hard lines of Richie’s chest. He curves his body around Richie’s shoulders, tilts his face into the curve of Richie’s neck. There’s no illusion that Richie craves the comfort here he’s never received at home, but right now it’s Eddie who feels enveloped and warm. It’s Eddie who feels safe in a way he never has been before.

Eddie curls a hand around Richie’s neck. Tilts Richie’s neck down, so it’s more accessible. Whispers, “It’s okay.”

The thing is, there’s no pill to swallow that will make this problem go away. You can’t always take a baseball bat to your problems, even if you do have the bravery of one Richie Tozier. The past still haunts their footsteps, even if the pain shows up in different ways. Bruises aren’t always visible from the outside, and suffering doesn’t always show up in marks and welts. Richie’s strife and Eddie’s illnesses don’t even have the same names—even if the common denominator is what’s kept them both an arm’s length apart.

They don’t need the same medicine, but maybe Eddie can still be the prescription.

“It’s real."

Another moment, another pause, another exchange of breath. Eddie’s caught Richie off guard, maybe. Richie assumed his uncharacteristic doubt might push Eddie away, might make him doubt, too. Thought Eddie didn’t really mean it, the way his parents never do. Thought none of this would last more than a night, and they would be back to their regularly scheduled program within a week or two.

There's a notch in Richie's brow, a barely there curve of skin and muscle working in his forehead that Eddie hates. Not because it exists, necessarily, but because of what it signifies: because Richie looks more battered and broken than he did three years ago in the tunnels beneath Derry. Because Richie faced his conscious, real life fear and succeeded until Eddie came along and brought this new one into the light. Between the two of them, statistics say it should be Eddie that’s freaking out, running away, scared out of his mind, but looking at Richie’s long, disbelieving face, Eddie realizes statistics don’t mean a damn thing. Facts are just digits on paper, and Richie could never be contained to something so base and inane as a number on a form.

Richie has always been _too_ much, and usually that preface is followed by a bad thing: too loud, too obnoxious. Too hyper, too frustrating. He’s brash and crass and rude, he’s honest and blunt to a fault. Up close and personal Richie is still all these things, but he’s also one more: he’s also vulnerable, too.

He’s also alone, unloved and neglected. He’s also smart, and funny, and charismatic. He’s also everything Eddie never knew he wanted until his subconscious did the talking for him. Until Richie opened his mouth and Eddie shut him up in a new, unexpected way.

He’s also so fucking sad and it fucking hurts.

Here, in the pale yellow light of Bill’s porch, Eddie wants to wipe that sad expression off Richie's face until Richie can't remember his _name_.

Eddie surges forward with the intention of doing just that.

They stay there, upright and intertwined for another ten minutes until Stan stumbles out of the house, a bleary-eyed, half-awake, curly-haired disaster, almost intruding on their searching hands and beating hearts.

 

* * *

 

Eddie is not expecting Richie to appear at his window the following day.

“Rich? What are you doing here?”

Richie moves through the room with his usual grace, hands stuffed in his pockets, Hawaiian shirt flowing with the breeze. He shrugs his thin shoulders in lieu of answering, eyes sweeping over the room as though he’s searching for something, despite the knowledge that everything Eddie owns has a place, and the placement of said things never changes.

“Bored.”

Eddie opens his mouth to call bullshit—then closes it.

“Okay,” he says instead, with only mild inflection. “What do you want to do?”

Richie swivels around at that, his brown eyes shining. “What _don’t_ I want to do, Eddie bear, that is the question.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, opting for the logical answer instead of the sexual one. Like always. “Be at home.”

Richie snaps his fingers. “Not the answer I was going for, but technically not incorrect.”

At least he’s more at ease here, Eddie thinks. “So...” He spreads his hands, waiting.

The thing is, it was easier to call Richie's bluff in the darkness. It was easier to be bold when there weren’t two large eyes peering back at him, squinting ridiculously behind those bulky frames. It was simpler when kissing had its own kind of language, when the past was shitty parents and demonic clowns and the future didn't involve one of those two things. There's a certain adrenaline rush, a certain desperation in the darkness that makes Eddie bolder, he realizes, and standing in the sunlight next to the same boy who is two parts ridiculous and one part Eddie's hero makes things—confusing. Muddled. In the light of day, Eddie doesn't know what the fuck to say.

The one time he wants _Richie_ to fucking talk, of course.

In lieu of a response that involves said communication, Richie takes a step forward, instead, running those delicate, long fingers up Eddie's arm. It's incredibly invasive and unbelievably distracting, and Eddie wants nothing more than to lean into the embrace, to feel those same hands everywhere, all over him.

He doesn't move, though.

Richie isn't even looking at him, staring at his fingers tracing Eddie's arm instead, like he can't believe the path his fingers are trailing. Eddie sneaks glances between Richie's eyes and his throat, watches the miniscule muscles there twitch with each flicker of thought as Richie wrestles with something, possibly himself.

Richie clears his throat. The fingers stop somewhere around Eddie's elbow. Not the most exciting place to linger, but Eddie's not about to start complaining.

“So it may not come as a big surprise that I'm pretty shitty at this.”

The rare bout of honesty from Richie Tozier makes Eddie's brain short circuit.

“What?” is the first thing he can come up with, because Eddie is actually an idiot.

Richie performs an odd version of a fully body shrug, his eyes falling back in his head before fixing on Eddie with in a _really, Kaspbrak_ look.

“I can do your mom eight days of the week—”

“Jesus _Christ—”_

“But talking about...” Richie gestures between them, “is a touch more complicated, yeah?”

Richie finishes off the question with a horrible rendition of British humor, the final word tilting upward in exaggerated question. It hangs in the space between them, an offering.

“Not really,” Eddie snaps back, impatient and more than a little annoyed. “I like you. There.”

Richie stares at Eddie for a solid five seconds straight, not saying a single word. Eddie resolutely does not blush.

Finally Richie sighs, a subdued exhale so unlike him it's almost terrifying in its own right. “You don't want to date me, Kaspbrak.”

It's the most defeated Richie has ever sounded, and that's _after_ beating a clown in the fucking sewers with a baseball bat. It's also the dumbest fucking thing Eddie has ever heard. “Why?”

“Why not, man?” Richie drops the act, flinging his arms in the air before dropping them back down again, slapping his thighs in the process. “Nobody actually _wants_ to put up with my bullshit. Nobody willingly puts up with me by choice. Nobody wants to be there at all hours of the day, dealing with everything that this,” Richie gestures to himself like a full body scanning machine, “entails. Nobody—” Richie chokes on the last word, but holds his ground. He does not cry.

“Nobody wants me.”

Eddie takes a moment to let Richie breathe before stepping forward into those long gangly arms, into that firm, slim chest. He hears Richie's hummingbird heartbeat, he feels Richie's harsh breathing as he composes himself. But then, Richie's always been good at that—keeping things held together even when they're falling apart.

“I do,” Eddie whispers, and even though his voice is quiet, it's firm with conviction. Maybe even a little affection.

Since he's so close, Eddie feels it when Richie's breathing skips a step. He feels it when Richie's hand curls, just the tiniest bit, around Eddie's waist. He feels _Richie_ , every awkward, too-tall inch, and Eddie loves it.

He loves Richie.

In the harsh light of day, maybe it's not so terrible a thing to admit. Maybe it's worth a little awkward conversation, maybe it's worth a little uncomfortable honesty. Maybe the outcome is well worth the price.

Maybe Richie's worst fear wasn't clowns, after all.

 

* * *

 

It ends with a promise.

Nothing really changes at first. Eddie is careful with Richie in a way no one ever really is, in a way no one really knows how to be. There are depths and layers to Richie no one knows to uncover except Eddie and it’s thrilling, kind of, to know the rare, vulnerable parts to Richie’s otherwise unstoppable persona are trusted with just one person, and that person is him.

There’s not a formal discussion. There’s not a date, or an exchange of titles. It’s not what most people would call a typical relationship, Eddie thinks, but it also doesn’t much matter what it is or what it’s not because it’s not lacking in any way, not to them. After seeing what they’d seen, after growing up the way they did, words have different meaning than they used to. For Eddie, he doesn’t take words at their face value anymore. For Richie, actions speak louder than words.

It’s not conventional, but neither are they.

It works.

The others never ask, but Eddie thinks they know. It’s in the space they leave at Eddie’s side before Richie arrives, it’s in their too-knowing smiles and their unsubtle winks. They’re just as ridiculous as Richie in that respect, just as clever and just as obvious, but they’re also just as understanding, too.

No one talks outright, and for once, it’s nice. It’s peaceful in a way Derry never is.

And Richie, well. He’s still as outrageously flirtatious as always, and Eddie still blushes and squirms the same as he did before. Nothing is new under the sun, but with all new beginnings there are new elements introduced, even if they’re more subtle than the old. There are entire novels in Richie’s secret smiles, in his hidden hands and his whispered words and Eddie relishes it for the rare gem that it is, for however long it lasts.

For all that’s good though, there’s also that ever-present reminder of what is and is not in the realm of reality. Eddie wasn’t far off when he thought he wouldn’t be brave enough to flaunt without consequence, not with his mother still breathing down his neck and the bullies still taunting around every corner. But it turns out Richie doesn’t need that kind of flamboyance, either. For all of Richie’s typical, daily theatrics, he’s also patient when it counts and Eddie knows, with newfound intelligence, it has less to do with Richie’s personality and more to do with his negligent upbringing.

It’s not right, but then, nothing in Derry has ever been any form of the word.

It’s not right, but it works.

They take night drives weekly, just the two of them. It’s a chance to get out of town, a chance to leave their childhood homes and oppressive parents. It’s another of those unspoken somethings, another form of dealing. It’s a temporary escape from that _feeling_ , that paralyzing fear that claws in the dark and haunts their dreams.

The thing is, Eddie knows things will never go back to the way they were. Eddie and Richie will never be normal, they’ll never not be losers. Maybe fear will always haunt their footsteps, maybe they have another battle left to fight and maybe they’ll lose next time. Maybe there’s no way they’re coming out of this alive but right now, they are. Right now, they did. Right now, it doesn't matter what's to come because they have _this._

After so much time doubting what’s real and what’s make believe, maybe this one little piece of connection is all they get to keep. Maybe it’s all that matters. Fuck Derry. Fuck parents.

Just this. Just them.

Eddie promises himself that he’ll never forget.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to come say [hi](http://tatooinelukes.tumblr.com/)!


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